BY PATRICK CROWLEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
VERONA -- When it comes to politics, Gex "Jay" Williams" is perfect.
In one primary and three statehouse campaigns, the Republican candidate for U.S. Congress has never lost an election in Northern Kentucky. This despite running against better-known, better-funded opponents, including a 20-year Democratic statehouse incumbent, a successful business and community leader, and a hand-picked GOP establishment candidate.
The region's power and political elite don't consider Mr. Williams as favorably as voters have.
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WILLIAMS FILE
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Age: 46
Home: Verona
Hometown: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Family: Wife, Judy, and six children
Religion: Nondenominational Christian
Education: Bachelor's degree, computer science, and master's degree, computer and information engineering, both from University of Florida; attended U.S. Naval Academy
Work experience: Teaching and research assistant, University of Florida, 1975-79; president and co-founder, Information Management Corp., 1979-86; vice president of marketing, Software Clearing House, 1986-92; self-employed political and computer consultant, 1993-present
Political career: Elected to Kentucky House, 1990; elected to Kentucky Senate, 1993; re-elected to Senate, 1994; won three-way Republican 4th District congressional primary, 1998
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They have been slow to accept, even been hostile toward, the Florida native and relative newcomer to public office. He has helped change the political landscape in Northern Kentucky and Frankfort. And he's done it with a brand of politics that careens across a philosophical spectrum of traditional Republican, Reagan Democrat, tax-hating Libertarian, Christian Coalition conservative and bare-knuckled Frankfort pols.
A good-looking, friendly family man and husband, known for his quick smile and booming laugh, Mr. Williams uses his core beliefs and devotion to religion to take the Bible's advice and turn the other cheek.
"I could sit here and be a nice Christian and not get involved in this stuff and probably everybody would love me and like me and never say anything bad against me," Mr. Williams said.
"And I know full well when I get out there and start doing something that, no matter how hard I try, people are going to dislike me at the least, maybe hate me at the worst," he said.
Clear resentment
Still, in many power quarters there is an open resentment and clear misunderstanding of the man who:
- Rails on education reform while home-schooling his six kids.
- Walked away from a $100,000-a-year job selling software to become a nearly full-time legislator who dabbles in political consulting for a third of the income.
- Grew up in a privileged life of yachts, social connections, sports cars and sailing boats in Fort Lauderdale, but who now lives so modestly on a Verona farm that he had to sell 10 acres in a controversial land deal just to give his family money to live on during his full-time congressional campaign. The state investigated.
- Gets into trouble for inaccurately filling out paperwork but who is viewed as an expert on the technical nuances of parliamentary procedure.
- Has helped make opposition to abortion the political cause in Northern Kentucky.
- Has helped drive the Democrats out of dominance here and in Frankfort but who has also pushed aside many long-term, traditional Republicans who aren't totally in step with the more conservative, faith-based voters that give Mr. Williams his power base.
- Punishes his political opponents not by getting mad, but by getting even.
For instance, Mr. Williams was one of the ringleaders in the 1997 Senate coup in which 17 of the chamber's 18 Republicans joined with dissident Democrats to run the old-guard Democratic leadership out of power.
"The coup is probably one of the most important things Gex Williams ever did in the General Assembly," said Senate Minority Caucus Chairman Dick Roeding, a Lakeside Park Republican.
Before the coup, Democratic committee chairmen would often kill Republican-sponsored bills before they came to a vote.
"The coup changed all that," Mr. Roeding said. "It didn't mean just Republican bills would get a fair hearing. It meant all bills would be heard."
But there are some who say Mr. Williams goes too far in taking on his Democratic opponents, like when he battled Democrats over major state-funded projects such as the convention center in Covington and juvenile detention center in Newport.
Mr. Williams said his questions about how to pay for those projects were not politically motivated. But Democrats began calling him an obstructionist.
Born to a civil engineer and a school teacher, Mr. Williams sailed, played sports and worked with his father while growing up in South Florida.
After high school, where Mr. Williams finished in the top 10 percent of his class, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy for about two years before dropping out.
He went to the University of Florida, graduating with computer science degrees. He worked at the school for a while before starting his own consulting firm.
In 1977, while in school, he met his wife, Judy. Like her husband, she is a devout Christian.
Mr. Williams moved to northwest Arkansas in the early 1980s, where he struck up a friendship with then-Republican state legislator and now U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, who was working as a part-time pastor at a church Mr. Williams attended.
Mr. Hutchinson said he tried to get Mr. Williams to run for the Arkansas statehouse.
"Gex talked about it, but he wouldn't do it. "We sure share our convictions and values and the need for Christian influence and morals in public policy," Mr. Hutchinson said. "Gex has a very deep commitment in his own faith, and we both come from that same perspective."
Mr. Williams moved to Northern Kentucky in 1986 after taking a job with Software Clearing House in Cincinnati. He left the company, however, after being elected to the Kentucky House in 1990, a race he entered at virtually the last minute because the original candidate had dropped out.
Recruitment rumor
There have long been rumors that Mr. Williams was sent to Northern Kentucky by Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition to infiltrate local politics. He calls the charge laughable and there is no evidence he was ordered to come here by any religious or political group. But Mr. Williams does often fuse religion with his politics, and he fueled those Christian Coalition rumors when he hired the organization's former executive director, Ralph Reed, as a consultant for his congressional campaign.
In addition to home-schooling his children with his wife, a trained educator, Mr. Williams allows very little television or music in his house. He works hard at politics, but reserves most Sundays for worship at a variety of nondenominational Christian churches and time with his family.
Known as a strong grass-roots political organizer, Mr. Williams uses phone banks, contacts he has with churches, computer programs and door-to-door contact to target and motivate voters.
But he also has been accused of push-polling, where his phone workers ostensibly call voters to conduct a survey but then promote Mr. Williams' campaign or bash his opponent. He has denied using push polling, though he has done work for a Louisville firm that has allegedly used the practice in some statehouse campaigns. Dan Monihan attended Community Christian Church in Florence with the Williams family.
"Gex is a brilliant guy," Mr. Monihan said. "He knows the issue, he knows what he stands for, he is not wishy-washy . . ."
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